


Gravedigger

by voxane



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Coming of Age, M/M, Please let me know if I'm out of line with the Muslim imagery, genderfluid Yuri, muslim otabek, past jjbek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:24:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxane/pseuds/voxane
Summary: Otabek has died in Russia, Canada and the United States. He felt like he's died a hundred times.He doesn't look at the pile of corpses so he doesn't realize how much he's grown.





	Gravedigger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softieghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softieghost/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Five (Or More) Places to Die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11434443) by [softieghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softieghost/pseuds/softieghost). 



> Written as part of the Remix challenged, I was elated to get Softieghost. She's a dear friend of mine, and her writing is so inspiring. I had a lot of fun sprinkling in other headcanons we've talked about, and references to her other fics! I hope everyone enjoys her fics as much as I do!

The first time Otabek Altin died, he was twelve years old, freshly foreign and entirely lost. His brain felt scrambled with new sights and a language that wasn’t quite his, but every neuron fired in the same direction at the sight of a blonde boy with a steely gaze contorting his body into ways he couldn’t comprehend. A boy like Ishim, made of fire and snow, drenched in his own jealousy. He was helpless in his admiration.

At a young age – death is hard to define. Otabek didn’t really know he died, at least at the time. His throat was tight, and his head was dizzy. Even in the underdeveloped mind and every explanation, his ego provided it was hard to deny that Otabek drowned that day, breathless under soldier eyes.

His father would tell him about when Otabek would be a man when he’d have a wife. He remembered an afternoon when his father had a glass too many of red wine. His face was relaxed, and he spoke with an uncommon candidness. He talked to Otabek like an old friend. He spoke about women like they were the epicenter of both their worlds. Like Otabek wasn’t sore and aching for extra time at the rink to prove himself through juniors.

His father spoke of women like they were Hafaza and Nazi’at wrapped in a bow of human flesh. He made implications that Otabek knew enough that he didn’t understand. He spoke of woman as they had a secret value, something unlocked whenever you were grown up. Or maybe growing up was seeing it. He told Otabek that women cooked and cleaned and raised great children, and something else he’d understand when he’s older. Otabek wondered if it’d change how he’d look at his mother. It made him nauseous in a way he had never experienced. He swallowed the sickness down and nodded at his father.

With the queasiness deep in his stomach, anchoring him, he did his best to look at girls that reminded of Mama, but different. He looked for girls with long hair and shiny lips. Girls with faces like spackle painted in pastels. He decided on a girl named Rashaun. Her hair curled like Mama’s, and her eyelashes were long and clumpy – which was pretty, apparently. She asked to kiss him – and the sickness jammed itself in his throat. He had to run before he could answer.

He told his father and he gave Otabek a merlot smile even though he hadn’t drunk a drop. He said that all men were afraid of women. His eyes crinkled in a way that suggested he wanted to give Otabek a hug or ruffle his hair. He’d never done those things.

Otabek died again. Fifteen and new and unfamiliar again. He was used to feeling lost by now. Despite that - This one was scarier – he didn’t know the language or the terrain. He felt more lost then he had ever in his entire life. But a beautiful boy with blue eyes held his hand and tried to speak slowly for him. The boy had a personality like pop rocks and a megawatt smile, and Otabek would never admit that smile made him hard in his sleep pants at night.

Jean-Jacques was good at ballet, like the blonde boy in Russia. Yuri Plisetsky, he learned in recent years. But Yuri wasn’t here. He was only in his dreams. Dreams that Jean had asked him about. Burning questions of _What’s your type_? and _Have you ever done anything_?

There was one night, shaken awake after dreaming of Yuri where Jean had asked him, gripping his arms with sweaty palms if he ever thought of boys.

Of course he did. No matter how much his father waxed lyrical about women, he had nothing but a blond arabesque cemented in his mind. Maybe blue eyes and tan pouting lips. A lot like what was staring up at him.

Otabek swallowed.

He admitted yes.

JJ kissed him back.

They both kissed hard, swapping pressure back and forth. Enough to make the cheap metal bed frame beneath them squeak. JJ’s skin was softer than Otabek ever imagined, and he still smelled like Otabek’s body wash. Otabek could feel JJ’s dick straining against his threadbare flannel pants. His dick was hard too. He dreamed of the sensation of them together. He was enamored with the idea of making JJ cum like he had in his cotton sleep pants time and time again.

Until Mrs. Leroy grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

Otabek knew he was in trouble. He didn’t need to see the terror reflected in JJ’s eyes. Nathalie didn’t even bother turning his gaze to him. She put all her shame on Jean-Jacques, the son she raised. Not the delinquent from Kazakhstan that was only a visitor in her home. He was put to judgment rigid in a teak wood dining chair. Nathalie and Alain paced back and forth, muttering in tones Otabek could barely hear if he was even meant to. It was easy to drown out their droning argument with thoughts of JJ, restless and alone in his bed. He wondered if they’d ever get to kiss again when all of this was over. After that night, it was decided he was set to the United States in a matter of months. Alain asked if he was okay, Out of obligation more than sympathy. Otabek sold his plane ticket to Detroit to buy a busted-up Bonneville.

Of course he was okay, old man.

Otabek worked on his bike when he wasn’t at the rink. He and JJ played nice, from a distance. Neither talked about how they could hear each other jerk off through the paper thin walls. They poured all their pent-up energy into trying to outdo each other in quads. JJ smiled the same way he landed as he kissed. Otabek wondered if he’d forget that in Detroit.

It only took another month to die again when his parents called him about his costumes. Otabek’s coach actually liked his classic rock sensibilities, and was ecstatic to choreograph is free skate to “ _Starman_ ”. His parents didn’t care for it.

“I know skating is like this Beka, but you need to think of your future.”

It didn’t phase Otabek much in the moment until he realized with oozing fear that he’d never meet his father’s expectations.

Kissing JJ felt good, but he was doing this for his future. To support his family. Maybe “ _Starman_ ” wasn’t for him. He frantically pulled his costume off him, shedding off the glitz and bravery that Bowie afforded him, and stared at his body in his mirror. He had broad shoulders and defined abdominals. He was a man. He understood the sadness in his father eyes.

The next day, he asks to change his free skate to “Help!”.

Otabek was used to dying, now. In Detroit, he all but laid bouquets on his headstone. Leo De La Iglesia, who in that easy way of youth was his best friend, caught him fisting himself in his sweatpants with frantic fingers and urgency like this orgasm could save life rather than dig his grave. There was little he could do to explain himself with his hands streaked in white, and Yuri Plisetsky’s Instagram bright on his phone.

Leo turned tail and refused to acknowledge he witnessed a suicide.

Otabek could feel the dirt crushing his lungs with he heard boisterous laughter drown out Leo’s voice. The laughter he could identify in a matter of seconds. And like a ghost, JJ waved at him. Otabek had no air to gasp for. He smiled in a way that Otabek could see Montreal moonlight soften all of his features, even in the sickly Detroit lights impossibly high up in the rafters. Otabek approached, hands jammed into his pockets, and kept his face tight. He refused to move a muscle, even with the upsetting sensation of his hardness brushing his knuckles every so often.

It only took 2 days for JJ to ask to kiss him. They had gone out past curfew to get snacks and Slurpees from the 7-11. They both broke their diet plans in half under the weight of a pepperoni pizza and sugary blue raspberry flavoring. They were doing all sorts of things that weren’t allowed, so of course, JJ would ask to kiss under flickering halogen streetlight.

“I can’t,” Otabek lied.

“Is it ‘cause of Yuri,” JJ asked, smacking his lips on the electric blue plastic straw. Otabek turned pulsing shades of pink. He stared at the sloppy slice of pizza, feeling like he was caught with his hand in his pants again. Otabek shrugged at him, grabbing another slice for himself.

“It’s normal to have crushes.” He offered with a dullness in his eyes, even in the all the lights of the night.

Was that was this was? This push and pull and unspoken words between him and Jean Jacques? This painful uncertainty? He knew JJ had the same tangle of emotions wringing his heart. It was in the silence of them with nothing but summer gnats dancing in the light between. JJ’s voice cracked through the night, and Otabek didn’t really catch what he said. It was something about God.

Religion was amorphous for Otabek. Allah didn’t seem to exist outside of Kazakhstan. Allah wasn’t in St. Petersburg, nor in Montreal. JJ told him a lot about Jesus Christ and the word of God. He spoke of heaven like the golden gates were a medal he could drape around his neck. Otabek didn’t tell JJ about his Jannah. He clenched his palms together, sweaty with summer, that this was it. He swore that Otabek Altin was thrust through 8 gates, surrounded by angels, officially expired for the last time.

He kissed JJ, artificial and saccharine, with a blue stained tongue. This new figure, a sheep in Otabek clothing, was put on life support through fingers knotted in black hair. He told himself this was living as he came down JJ’s throat with eyes screwed shut, and blurry overexposed image of blonde hair and green eyes burned into the backs of his eyelids.

He had to tell himself he was alive more and more often. After practice, when he finally was in the locker room alone, free from JJ’s towel too low on his hips, he’d tell an Otabek in a mirror that he wasn’t afraid of sex, he wasn’t afraid of women. He felt the heat of living through the merging with another.

He was too afraid to ever check his pulse. The first time he realized his heart was still beating was when he asked Yuri Plisetsky for his phone number, cool and effortless in the Barcelona airport. Yuri sniffed, and said sure. They traded info with a few mechanical taps on each other's phones. Before Otabek could say anything he was hit with a hurricane of blonde hair and wrapped in frantic arms. Yuri mumbled something, before turning to run in the same whirlwind energy that brought them together. Yuri was gone, off to fly too far away, where he couldn't surprise Otabek with a hug. In his privacy, Otabek brought a nervous hand to rest on his neck. His fingertips jumped in time the pulsing blood, deep from his heart, in a rhythm, his body made just for Yuri.

Time was different, in a world with Yuri. Time seemed in tandem with his distance from Yuri, minutes became meaningless, neither aging nor regressing. Otabek learned St. Petersburg time, or at least Yuri time. He awaited Yuri's breakfast text. First, break. Lunch. Whenever Yuri failed to send one, Otabek felt the existential pressure that time itself was nonfunctional. He lived in Yuri’s moments and felt short of breath without them.

Yuri would give him a St. Petersburg goodnight, and sometimes Otabek couldn't give him an Almaty goodnight, his hands shamefully busy, trying to rub away the sensation of death. Otabek felt too alive, his blood frenzied through his veins as he came in Barzakh. He panted swallowing too-big gulps of air and wondered if Yuri felt anything like this. Otabek wondered if Yuri lived and died as many times as he did and if he aged in Otabek time like he did with Yuri’s.

It only took four years for Otabek to learn Yuri was just as much a cadaver as he was. He had staved off decay through longing, and every neuron in Otabek's body yearned to fill his lungs with life.

Otabek had his chance, in his home of Almaty. Yuri came to spend time with him. They had nothing planned, except to live. Together. Yuri demanded to go to one of Otabek's shows, and he dressed for battle. His body dripped in sequins that reflected the party lights into scattered blades. Yuri was ethereal, glittering brighter than any man or woman around, long bare legs in impossibly high heels. Yuri moved like his heart thrummed in time with the bassline, like Yuri knew he was playing a song just for him. Otabek peeled his eyes from Yuri's thighs, and waist and just a flash of his ass, to meet his gaze. He stopped frozen in the dance floor, like the lull of the bridge was the eye of his storm. Otabek wished he had a name for every shade of blue he saw in his eyes. The music was deafening, barely louder than the cacophony of tipsy clubgoers. But Otabek was so sure he could hear Yuri's breath.

Otabek cut his set early, too preoccupied to address the confusion of the next act or the club owner. Yuri ran toward him, parting the crowd like he was a god in this club. It was hard to resist rising to the tips of his toes, to taste Yuri then and there surrounded by the crowd. He'd waited so long, he could wait one more together-minute. He dragged Yuri, with both their lives on the line, heading to the private staff bathroom.

"It's cleaner." Was all he offered. Yuri understood.

The world outside of them was dull and muffled and so far away behind the locked door. Every needy groan, and hitched breath drowned Otabek's reprised track in the outside world, playing on repeat while the next DJ shuffled his gear in. Yuri still moved like he was dancing to Otabek's song, even through the clamor of Otabek undoing his belt, and choked back grunts echoed in the bathroom walls. Yuri danced, in a haze of the candy-colored cocktails, and perhaps the cocaine-like sensation of living. Otabek danced with Yuri, hands on Yuri's cock like a beacon around the glittery gold waterfall of Yuri's dress. Otabek felt Yuri's pulse in his dick, and his neck, and it was nothing but feeling as they silently came. Otabek's head went bright-white and fuzzy, every twitch of their burning alive bodies the only thing keeping him grounded to earth until his own music bled into his senses through the cracks of brick in the bathroom wall.

_Just remember to fall in love_

_There's nothing else._

Otabek was acutely aware of life, with Yuri. He lived all summer, as they fucked anywhere they could in his city. When they were apart, back to counting the moments in Yuri-time, Otabek feared death could crawl under his skin and rot out his soul again. Yuri murdered the idea when he told Otabek he loved him, in tears over skype. Otabek could live in every snapchat of Potya, and surprise package on his doorstep, and every teasing text from Jean-Jacques Leroy asking about the colors for their wedding.

At twenty-three Otabek lived in, a plane built by himself and Yuri, together and all their own. He was Yuri's Otabek, now. An Otabek confident and unashamed of everything that made him live - just like Yuri. Nothing like his trail of cowardly corpses. He crawled out his self-dug grave for the last time.

With Yuri, he lived.

**Author's Note:**

> Hafaza - type of angel. It is similar to the Christian concept of a guardian angel.  
> Nazi’at - in reference to “the angels who tear out the souls of the wicked”  
> Jannah - literal term meaning paradise, behind 8 gates  
> Barzakh - barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds


End file.
